


and we can watch it unravel

by verity



Series: white elephant [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Comfort Sex, F/M, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Horror, Nemeton, Pack Dynamics, Resurrection, Team Human, grave desecration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:51:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison's never exhumed a body before, but she's buried a lot of them. Same skill set.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and we can watch it unravel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anatsuno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatsuno/gifts).



> for anatsuno, who wanted Allison/Stiles +/- Lydia. (UM. HAVE SOME CHEERY MORNING READING? I hope you're feeling better!) Many thanks to Ashe, Luz, and twitter for encouragement. <3
> 
> this is set immediately previous to [find a thread to pull](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1022770), and won't make much sense unless you've read it, I'm afraid.
> 
>  **content note** : graphic details of disinterment of a corpse & reduction to bones.

The graveyard dirt turns easily beneath Allison's shovel. She's never exhumed a body before, but she's buried a lot of them. Same skill set.

Stiles sticks his head over the edge of the pit and Allison narrowly avoids hitting him in the face with her next toss of dirt. "How's it going down there? Do you have an ETA?"

"I want to be out of here by dawn," Lydia's voice floats above them. 

Allison wipes the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. "I'm almost there," she says. "I'll try."

—

There's no official timeline, but they're close to the end. Scott and Kira left first, then Isaac; Lydia's the last holdout, crashing in Allison's spare room. Every night over the past week, Allison's hovered by her closed door for a moment before she passes down the hallway without knocking.

Tonight, while Laura's body cooks down in the big pot on the kitchen stove, Lydia pads in barefoot with her still-damp hair pulled back from her face with a flagging scrunchie. "By the end of the month," she says, peering over Allison's shoulder into the pot. "Ten days, max."

"You think it'll take that long?" Allison says.

Lydia shrugs, the loose collar of her nightgown slipping on her shoulders. "Always prepared," she says. "That's the Girl Scout way."

The stove is a ridiculous six-burner range that came with the condo when Allison's father bought it nearly a decade ago. Allison's not sure she's ever used it before. She had to pick the pot up at Big Lots last week. It holds 200 quarts; she found it next to the mason jars and pectin for canning.

"You'd better throw that pot out when you're done," Lydia says after a moment. "Where did you get it, K-Mart?"

"Aim lower," Allison says.

—

Stiles comes over a little later. "I can't sleep," he says, dropping his keys in the bowl on the top of the foyer table. "Are you busy?"

"Only with boiling human flesh," Lydia calls from the kitchen. "Allison, I'm going to redo my nails. Do you have any base coat?"

"Check under the sink in the bathroom," Allison says as she takes Stiles by the wrist and drags him back toward the bedroom. The carpet crunches beneath their feet: she needs to have it cleaned, needs to stop wearing shoes in the house.

"They're normal nightmares, okay," Stiles says before she even has the door shut behind them. "They're not like the ones—wait, have you—"

Allison shakes her head. "No." The last time she dreamed about her aunt, she was a senior in high school. 

"I dreamed about Derek dying, about the nemeton." Stiles sits down at the foot of the bed and starts tugging at the laces of his sneakers. "Nothing special."

"Lydia's been up forever, I can't take too long," Allison says. "Unless you want to take a shift keeping an eye on the—"

Stiles rolls his eyes before he starts pulling off his shirt. "What's that saying about how a watched pot never boils?"

Allison starts in on her jeans.

—

The moles scattered across Stiles's broad shoulders form delicate constellations. Allison knows them all. She knows his scars, too, on his hands and chest and skull, and the newest one just beside his adam's apple, where he had a mole excised last year. "It's not cancerous," he told them at the pack meeting. "My doctor just wants to be—cautious."

Allison wanted to laugh, thinking about any of them dying a slow death, thinking about—but Stiles's face was pale and serious. He hadn't lost his dad yet; he still felt his losses individually, could string them into a story like beads. "Cautious," she said. "That's good."

Now she rubs her thumb against the scar and feels the ripple of cartilage beneath flesh when Stiles swallows. "Come on," she says, pushing at his shoulders until he falls back on the bed. "I don't have all night."

Stiles yawns. "Some of us do."

"Do you want to sleep or not?" Allison says as she climbs on top of him. 

Stiles noses at her neck lazily, places a kiss there before he rolls them over. "Not yet."

There's something reassuring about Stiles's bulk, the way he cages her with his arms, careful to keep his weight off her body so she can breathe. He strokes her side, still bruised and tender from last week, and she reaches up to cup his face in her hand. There's no reason for them not to be gentle with each other. 

They take turns warming each other up, Allison jerking Stiles off, Stiles teasing at her clit with practiced ease, before Allison drags a condom out of the box from beneath the bed. She had an abortion in college; even with a steady partner and on birth control, she's not taking any chances. Stiles waits patiently while she unwraps it and rolls it on him. "You ready?" he says when she grabs a tissue from her hands to wipe the sticky lube from the condom off her hands.

Allison smiles up at him. "Do me." Yeah, she's all romance.

She arches her back so she can wrap her legs around Stiles's waist as he pushes into her, tug him tighter inside. The cold ballast tethered to their hearts has no claim on this, the movement and sensation of their bodies. _I am here, you are here._ Stiles pushes in; Allison pushes up.

—

Lydia yawns when Allison wanders into the kitchen. She's dragged out the step-stool so she can peer into the pot and stir carefully with the long, slotted spoon. "I hope you bought a big colander."

Allison joins her at the stove. "Have you no faith in me?"

"You know I do," Lydia says, turning. When she's working magic, her eyes go dark and glossy, but most of the time she looks like this: lovely, composed, even in her nightgown. Of all of them, Lydia's the least visibly marked. She takes the hand Allison offers and steps down to the floor.

On her first day at Beacon Hills High School, Scott lent Allison a pen and Lydia pulled her aside, claimed Allison for her new best friend. They planned Scott's departure together, the pack and Derek and Cora, and when Scott left, it hurt, but it felt—right. Final. He's been her alpha almost as long as he's been her friend.

"You'll call," Allison says. "You'll—visit sometimes, won't you?"

Lydia shrugs. "We'll see how everything goes. I don't want to—"

"No one could replace you," Allison says, throat tight.

"I know," Lydia says. She looks down at her feet, bare on the tile floor, toenails glistening red.

—

After breakfast, all three of them hike out to the spot where Laura was murdered, her bones clicking against each other in Allison's backpack. While Lydia and Stiles start to prepare for the ritual, Allison hangs a camp lantern on a branch overhead and lays Laura out, puts each delicate bone into place on the dirt. Laura's vertebrae stud the ground like bulbs waiting to be planted. They don't know what Laura will be like, if she'll be a better alpha than Derek or Cora would have, but she will, at least, be something different.

Lydia wanders off into the forest for half an hour and comes back leading a doe by the scruff of her neck. "It's time," she says.

Stiles digs his fingers into the earth and the nemeton tugs at the void beneath Allison's breastbone. The sky above them is heavy, moonless. Lydia draws a knife from her sleeve.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


End file.
